University Teaching as E-Business?
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Case Study: Army University Access Online

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CSHE > Research > University Teaching as E-Business > Case Studies > Army University Access Online

NB: These draft case studies, compiled by Shannon Lawrence, are an internal resource for the University Teaching as E-business? research project. Originally released in October 2001, they were updated in March 2002. They were gathered from numerous sources, including news articles, press releases, scholarly reports, and company websites. In many cases, information presented herein was taken directly from The Chronicle of Higher Education's longitudinal series of articles on Information Technology and Distance Education, which represents the single best source for information about this evolving universe.

Launched in January 2001, Army University Access Online (AUAO) is designed to provide access to quality education for enlisted soldiers around the globe, helping them further their current career or prepare them for a new one, while providing the Army with top preparation for its forces. AUAO brings together a select consortium of education institutions via a state-of-the-art web portal, eArmyU.com, with comprehensive student support and quality control. eArmyU is part of a series of dynamic changes that the Army is engaging in to transform the Army, and how the Army educates its soldiers. The mission of eArmyU is to increase retention by allowing soldiers to earn credits, degrees and certificates at low or no cost to them while they serve on active duty and to develop educated, technology-savvy soldiers who can succeed in the network-centric missions and battlefields of the 21st century.

Products/Services

AUAO provides many educational benefits to soldiers, including a high quality classroom experience, comprehensive student services, full course credit portability between institutions, and the granting of credit for military training and experience.

AUAO’s degree and certificate options are expansive, ranging from general education to health services to technology and business. Students can choose from more than 87 degree programs from more than 24 different universities throughout the United States to fulfill their educational and career goals. AUAO also offers a highly flexible online course catalog that allows soldiers to identify available programs and determine whether they must complete any pre-requisite courses in order to enroll. In addition to the comprehensive course catalog, soldiers are able to access a broad array of student services online. To support students as they select and then work toward the completion of their degree, AUAO provides a full scope of advising and mentoring services via the web and telephone, as well as in-person. Specifically, soldier-students have access to academic support services at the portal, degree, course and subject levels through counselors, program mentors, tutoring, and instructors. Soldiers receive 100% of the funds required for tuition, books and course fees, as well as a personal laptop, printer, Internet access and email account.1 In addition to 24-hour technical support, AUAO provides soldiers with assistance in determining a program of study, registering for courses and transferring credits.

AUAO is made up of 5 program communities: Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences; Communications & Business; Health, Nutrition & Education; Mathematics & Science; and Vocational Skills. There are several AUAO Program Mentors assigned to each Program Community who advise students pursuing a degree that falls within that community. Students are assigned a Program Mentor based on their chosen degree of study. Program Mentors have vast educational experience in the degree programs within their program community and can provide valuable academic guidance to soldier-students.

Each soldier-student is provided program links specific to his/her field of study, a link to his/her home institution, and important Program Mentor contact information. Using this information, soldier-students can begin to establish a distance-learning community with their Program Mentor and other students pursuing degrees in the same or similar areas of study.

Soldier-students are provided all the tools necessary to operate effectively and efficiently as an online student in a technology package training session that they will be scheduled to attend when they enroll in the program. The technology package provided to individual students includes a laptop computer and printer, Internet service provider and email accounts, live tech support through on-site specialists, call-in help desk and computer training.

The eArmyU portal is the one stop where soldier-students can access course work, educational advisory services, online registration services, and online technical and administrative support. It is also the doorway through which Army Education counselors, program mentors, and others access tools that enable them to provide online support to soldier-students. Finally, the portal provides Army officials, universities and eArmyU staff with access to program data.

When soldiers use the portal, they have to log in only once to verify identity, instead of having to log in each time they enter secure portions of the member colleges' Web sites. Books are ordered automatically when the soldiers register for classes. Most importantly, information presented has a consistent "look and feel" as a result of the SCORM standards developed by the Department of Defense. The Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is a set of interrelated technical specifications built upon the work of the AICC, IMS, and IEEE to create one unified "content model." These specifications enable the reuse of Web-based learning content across multiple environments and products. The processing of tuition payments and other business functions of the portal are less well-automated.

Management/Governance

AUAO claims to have the best-in-class providers of online educational programs and services, technology components, and program management (see Table 1). These providers compose the backbone to the Army's distance education programs delivered through the eArmyU.com portal. AUAO members are market-leaders in their respective industries and are experienced at working collaboratively to deliver integrated solutions to customers. The key AUAO members are PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, the Council on Academic Management, as well as an impressive group of education partners and learning technology and infrastructure support providers. PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP is the integrator for the AUAO program. Council on Academic Management (CAM)2 assisted in establishing the framework for developing standards, policies, and quality assurance procedures for selecting and managing higher education partners.

Collectively, these education partners have delivered more than 3,000 online courses to more than 250,000 students. All institutions offering degrees belong to the Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges Army Degree (SOCAD, for undergraduate degrees) or SOC (for graduate degree) programs, a consortium of more than 1,400 colleges that already offer courses to soldiers and their families. This requirement guarantees transferability of credit among schools and maximum credit for prior learning and military experience. In addition, their home institution evaluates all prior learning experiences (including military training and experience and college-level testing) for maximum credit toward the individual program of study.

AUAO has also partnered with three leading learning technology providers: Blackboard, Saba, and PeopleSoft.3 Blackboard and Saba are providers of online tools, learning platforms, and learning management systems. PeopleSoft provides the leading market information system for managing education support services. AUAO’s technology partners provide a comprehensive, integrated technical solution on a stable platform. AUAO also provides soldier-students with hardware and software solutions using infrastructure support providers such as HP and Compaq for notebook computers and printers, Intel Online Services for managed hosting, Smarthinking.com4 for academic tutoring, MBS Direct5 for textbook distribution, and the GALILEO digital library, among others.

Financing/Strategy

Officials from PricewaterhouseCoopers worked on a $453-million dollar government budget with 60 subcontractors to build the Army's portal, including more than 20 accredited institutions that deliver courses online. The government had expected to pay upwards of $600-million for the project. The company had to create electronic "interfaces" for 10 commercial software applications from different vendors so that the applications could exchange information. The portal became operational during the summer of 2001 after testing the program in January with 15,000 students at bases in Georgia, Kentucky, and Texas.

The distance education industry was surprised at how quickly all of the necessary pieces for the portal were put together. Before the Army sought bids to build an online-education portal, technology companies had not gone ahead with the difficult technical work needed to create such an infrastructure. The Army's "$453-million carrot" had the effect of speeding up the development that needed to be done before online-learning communities could really take hold. The question still to be answered is how well this infrastructure will handle large communities like the Army's, which is expected to expand to include 80,000 soldier-learners within five years. If the site is expanded to accommodate families of soldiers, the numbers of students could reach the millions, making the army the largest broker and customer of distance learning in the US.

Update (February 2002)

AUAO announced that it met its enrollment goals for 2001, providing distance education opportunities to more than 12,000 soldiers during 2001, more than 50% of whom were new to both the Army's educational program and to postsecondary education. Though the program is experiencing growing pains in its relationships with education providers, mostly a result of the Army's call to offer standardized tuition and quarterly academic schedules, overall the program was a success and received kudos for its productive startup by partner institutions. In December 2001, integrator PriceWaterhouseCoopers issued new RFPs to add more partner institutions this year, who will join eArmyU in the spring 2002. To increase participation, PriceWaterhouseCoopers reduced its requirement that institutions offer complete online degrees; now colleges are able to offer "partial-degree programs" which provide 50%, instead of 100%, of degree-related courses. Critic David Noble published Digital Diploma Mills, warning that the military's involvement in spurring technology in distance education could lead to standardization and a reduction in academic freedom.

References

• "The Army's Big Push in Distance Education" (transcript of colloquy, moderated by Sarah Carr). The Chronicle of Higher Education, 29 August 2000. http://chronicle.com/colloquylive/transcripts/2000/08/20000829caldera.htm
  
  
• Arnone, Michael. "Army's Huge Distance-Education Effort Wins Many Supporters in Its First Year." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8 February 2002. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i22/22a03301.htm
  
  
• Arnone, Michael. "Army's Distance-Education Project Seeks More Colleges as Participants." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10 December 2001. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i17/17a02802.htm
  
  
• Carr, Sarah. "Army Bombshell Rocks Distance Education" The Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 August 2000. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v46/i50/50a03501.htm
  
  
• Carr, Sarah. "Army Picks Consulting Group to Run Distance-Education Effort" The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 January 2001. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i17/17a04601.htm
  
  
• Carr, Sarah. "Army Plans to Offer Laptops and Distance Education to All Soldiers" The Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 July 2000. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v46/i45/45a04401.htm
  
  
• Carr, Sarah. "Army Releases Details of Its Plan for Online Education for Soldiers" The Chronicle of Higher Education, 29 September 2000. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i05/05a04603.htm
  
  
• Carr, Sarah. "Colleges and Companies Team Up to Vie for Role in Army Program." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 17 November 2000. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i12/12a06001.htm
  
  
• Carr, Sarah. "U.S. Army Chooses PricewaterhouseCoopers to Run Big Distance-Education Project" The Chronicle of Higher Education, 15 December 2000. http://chronicle.com/daily/2000/12/2000121501u.htm
  
  
• Olsen, Florence. "Army's Portal Could Benefit Other Distance-Education Projects" The Chronicle of Higher Education, 23 July 2001. http://chronicle.com/daily/2001/07/2001072301u.htm
  
  
• Olsen, Florence. "U.S. Army's Portal Is Up and Running." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10 August 2001. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i48/48a04902.htm
  
  
• Young, Jeffrey. "Distance-Education Critic's Book Takes Aim at Army's Efforts." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8 February 2002. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i22/22a03401.htm

Notes

1 Soldier-students must successfully complete 12 semester hours of eArmyU courses during their first two years of eArmyU participation. Failure to successfully complete required courses requires repayment of the pro-rated value of the technology package. As with current tuition assistance programs, the soldier-student must reimburse the government for the costs of failed courses or those courses that the soldier-student does not complete for reasons other than military (as certified by the unit commander).

2 The members of CAM include: Michigan Virtual University, Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), EDUCAUSE, America Distance Education Consortium (ADEC), Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), and University of Wisconsin Academic ADL Co-Lab.

3 Blackboard has a user base of more than 2.1 million people worldwide. Saba is an active participant in an industry-wide effort to develop systems that comply with SCORM standards. More than 50 Global 2000 companies and government agencies rely on Saba to support their education and training programs. More than 450 institutions, including some of the largest universities in the United States, use PeopleSoft's SA product.

4 SMARTHINKING.com currently serves over 50 colleges and universities across the nation.

5 MBS Direct is the nation's largest provider of course material distribution services to institutions of higher education offering distance-learning programs. MBS Direct currently serves nearly 300 institutions.